New: The last two weeks have been potentially devastating to America's ability to attract top talent. Between visa bans, revocations, and the possibility of cancelling international graduates' ability to work after school, our talent retention problem is about to get worse. 1/7

Today, using new data, we update these estimates. Over the last decade w/ data, I find that only 37% of international graduates ultimately stay in the U.S., including only 18% at the BA level and 43% at the master's degree level. 4/7

5.29.25 – Jeremy Neufeld on today to talk about how U.S. immigration powers innovation: • 70% of top AI founders came on student visas • How programs like OPT keep America competitive • What a “Project Paperclip 2.0” could look like

War refugee turned Nobel prize winning scientist in the US posts about Trump administration cuts to funding for his biomedical research "Within hours" he gets an email from China offering to move his lab to any Chinese city with guaranteed funding for 20 years

US visa wait times are out of control.

You’re a young policy entrepreneur, mid-commute, daydreaming about abundance and scrolling Twitter, when suddenly you see this. Can it be? It can. It’s Randy Clarke on Statecraft. statecraft.pub/p/how-to-save-…

We should be doing everything we can to keep people like this.

Finally, student visa arrivals are critical to America’s R&D ecosystem. Workers who first came to the US on student visas are more than twice as likely to hold jobs doing basic or applied R&D as native-born college grads.

Census says less than 30% of STEM degree holders work in STEM. But when you actually ask STEM grads "does your job relate to your degree?" 79% say yes, the same rate as non-STEM grads. People are writing books about failed STEM investments that are based on bad data.

Wait, did we actually brain drain this guy from China?

defenseanalyses.org

This is how to do it

Good new report from Heritage Foundation on maximizing the value America gets from the H-1B program. Alexander recommends ranking applicants based on pay, which would squeeze *much* more economic value for the U.S. out of the program and destroy the outsourcing business model overnight.

(1/11) From the Manhattan Project to Operation Warp Speed, the US government has repeatedly shaped the development of emerging technologies. How should we shape AI progress today? In a new essay, Tao Burga, Tim Hwang, and I talk about how to navigate the AI tech tree.

Xi Jinping announced to the Central Committee the goal to be competitive in talent competition by 2035. Fortunately, the US has a natural advantage in this competition, but it’s one we can't afford to lose.

Since October 2024 I've been working with SEVIS — the government database about international students — to build a new visualization tool. My biggest takeaway? US immigration record keeping is worse than I could have Imagined. 1/

The new USCIS Director says he wants to kick foreign students out of the country when they graduate: "We've got to do everything we can to really make it abundantly difficult...for students to think that they are just going to continue to live and work in the United States."